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Only Estonia and Portugal's employment growth was greater than Spain's between April and June this year, a new study shows.

The number of people in work in Spain in the second quarter of 2014 compared with the first quarter grew 0.7 per cent, almost half a per cent more than the Eurozone average, according to data from the Eurostat office of statistics.

The Eurozone average was just 0.2 per cent and that of EU member states 0.2 per cent.

The growth figure puts Spain behind only Estonia (1.2 per cent) and Portugal (0.9 per cent) in terms of employment growth between April and June.

Spanish daily Expansión reported that the countries with the poorest employment performances were Lithuania and Cyprus where employment fell by 0.1 per cent.

In year-on-year terms, the Eurozone saw a 0.4 per cent rise in employment, compared with 0.1 per cent in the same first quarter comparison.

Spanish year-on-year growth was 1 per cent, ranking it 10th of the 18 Eurozone countries and 6th in the EU as a whole.

At the end of the quarter, 224.9 million people were employed in the EU, of whom 146.5 million were in the Eurozone.